2 Sons of Famous Politicians Took Different Paths to Top

Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, November 2, 2000

2000-11-02 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Toward the end of the 1970s, when disco was king and Watergate was a fresh memory, two young men with fledgling careers, Ivy League credentials and well-known fathers made the same choice.

They decided to run for Congress.

George W. Bush, with scraggly hair and a cluttered bachelor apartment, tooled through the oil fields and cotton farms of West Texas.

Al Gore sheared his shoulder- length straight hair and left law school as he toured the farm communities and small hamlets of central Tennessee. Both used their famous political names to seek office even though they refused to allow their dads to become directly involved in their campaigns.

The House campaigns, just two years apart, demonstrate a similarity between these famous sons, who now stand just a step away from the ultimate political prize.

Yet they have traveled very different paths in the two decades since their initial foray into politics in order to arrive at this moment. The challenges they pursued, the work ethic they employed and the style of governing they demonstrated provide clues to how each might behave as commander in chief.

Gore, son of the late Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore, went on to be a fiercely ambitious member of the House, plunging into technical policy matters in such areas as arms control, toxic-waste dumping and global warming. After eight years in the House, he won a seat in the Senate, ran unsuccessfully for president, wrote a book on the environment and was chosen by Bill Clinton in 1992 to be his running mate.

Bush returned to the oil business, made a little money and raised a family. He drank too much, by his own account, and then at age 40 suddenly gave it up. He used his oil connections and his father's name to help buy the Texas Rangers baseball team, where he made a lot of money and was pals with everyone from the ticket vendors to Nolan Ryan. After his father served for eight years as vice president and four years as president, Bush was elected governor of Texas for consecutive terms.

Predicting how someone will behave once they assume the most powerful job in the world is more art than science. Yet each candidate brings certain distinct characteristics.

Gore is a man of details.

His 400-page treatise on the global environment, "Earth in the Balance," contains charts on carbon dioxide concentrations, world population growth, declines in rainfall in African latitudes and changes in atmospheric temperatures.

When asked to deliver a commencement address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology several years ago, he elicited input from Nobel scientists, convened weekly meetings with his staff and embarked on an ambitious reading schedule.

Dissatisfied with the speech a few days before it was to be delivered, he tore up the draft and pulled an all- nighter. The final address, according to a recent account in the Washington Post, "landed with little of the impact he had hoped for."

Aides describe Gore as a voracious reader who quickly masters details and seems to enjoy plunging into technical matters.

In Congress, he differentiated himself as a centrist Democrat who was fascinated with science and technology. It was during his 16 years in Congress that, he says, he "took the initiative to create the Internet."

"He engages on issues," former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota, who worked closely with Gore on the Senate science committee, observed at a recent forum. "He loves to talk issues."

As vice president, no one disputes that Gore has been as influential, and perhaps more, than any of his predecessors.

He is the first vice president to serve as a full member of the National Security Council. He had a standing weekly lunch engagement with the president until the campaign intervened. And he was put in charge of several high-priority administration projects, including the initiative to reduce the size of government.

A vice president's political leanings are overshadowed by the man he serves. But White House aides say Gore has been a consistent voice for military intervention, hard-line trade negotiations and centrist political causes such as welfare reform and a balanced budget.

On the campaign trail, he speaks endlessly of government as an agent of reform, prompting some Republicans to warn that he will be a throwback to old liberals such as Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

"He's a man with a great reverence for government," former Gov. Pete Wilson, who served with Gore in the Senate, said at a recent panel.

"I think he is a true believer, that government is the right solution," Wilson said. "It should be activist. It should be interventionist in virtually every problem."

That, Republicans say, explains why his solution to shoring up Social Security, education and health care is to dedicate a large chunk of the surplus to each.

Though Gore has a cadre of loyal aides who have been with him for years, the command atop his campaign has been rocky. Craig Smith, Tony Coelho and Bill Daley have all had their turns running Gore's campaign over the past 18 months.

Bush is a people person.

The first thing he did as the new governor of Texas was walk the corridors of the state capitol in Austin, meeting the legislators from both parties and winning their friendship if not their political allegiance.

Though a band of partisan Democrats now stalks the GOP candidate on the campaign trail to enumerate their differences, Bush achieved a degree of bipartisanship in Austin that would be unthinkable in Sacramento or Washington.

"His most effective trait is his ability to work with people and in fact to get people to like him, whether they be Democrats, Republicans, vegetarians, whatever," said Teel Bivins, a Republican member of the Texas state Senate.

"He gets you in a room, and you're there 10 seconds and he's got a nickname for you that will stick for the rest of your life," said Bivins, whom Bush refers to as "Biv."

Bush believes in limiting his agenda and expending his political capital in just a few places. As a candidate for governor in 1994, he ran on four issues: an overhaul of the juvenile justice system, improvement of public schools, a reduction in welfare benefits and tort reform. By the end of his first year in office, all four had been accomplished.

Bush does not get bogged down in protracted legislative battles. When the top legislative priority of his second term -- a large-scale change in Texas tax laws that would reduce the school system's reliance on property tax -- stalled in the Legislature, Bush quickly accepted a compromise and moved on.

Bush is known for making quick decisions. Supporters and opponents describe him as having a short attention span. Before the campaign began, his workday as governor of the nation's second-most populous state was relatively light, according to several accounts. Bush frequently held his first meeting at 8 a.m. and would conclude the day's final meeting before 6 p.m. In between, he would take a couple of hours off for exercise and other personal matters.

Bush has an unmistakably conservative record in Texas. He has restricted abortions, signed laws allowing concealed weapons and stood in the way of new regulations favored by environmentalists. At the same time, he has made extensive efforts to reach out to minorities and those left out of the state's prosperity.

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